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Comment by rosser | Hacker News Reader

As noted by many of the other comments, this is a fascinating article in so many different respects, but the most interesting take-away for me personally is a little detail that shows just how far the ripples cast from a seemingly small action can reach.

If one day, decades ago, a teenaged boy's co-worker and friend hadn't wanted to live like "normal" folks instead of scroungers, and shared a sushi dinner with his friend, Dennis Rodman probably wouldn't have ended up visiting the DPRK decades later, causing all the resulting foofaraw. But for that one little choice, a subsequent event that at least flashed across the awareness of most of the First World, and who knows how much of the rest of it, wouldn't have happened.

It's not necessarily something of geo-political consequence, but if that's not the notional "butterfly flapping its wings in China", I'm not sure what is.

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In some way, the butterfly effect highlights that North Korea is in meta-stable state, and relatively minor events on few select people can effect its political course. In the modern world, much less is governed by outliers of chance, simply by virtue of many more agents involved.

I suspect there where many minor changes that could have prevented any of the recent presidents from entering politics or at least running for president. Or more strangely Bush could have easily lost the an election with a minor change to the ballot design in a tiny area in a vary important state.

Overall I suspect that's for more impact than who's making sushi in NK as I don't think most presidents would have gone back to Iraq for instance. And without the Iraq war I don't think we would have the backlash that lead to healthcare reform etc.

Yes, I'm not denying causality of real world, just saying random factors tend to exert less influence here.

Taking America going to Iraq war, it might be a disturbing fact, but America wanted to go at war back then. The bloodlust of a common, red-blooded, mall-shopping American in the wake of 9/11 is the foremost reason the U.S. ended in two prolonged conflicts. Yes the reasons for Iraq were pulled from the hat, but the nation was eager to be deluded. Not a conspiracy of two men in DC: can anyone really imagine the USA not invading anyone after the 9/11 attacks?

But again what's happening here is that in democracy, the influences become averaged with certain cut-off of extremes, like a signal through a band filter. The politics becomes statistical, as opposed to heuristic deal in feudal countries like North Korea, and as such becomes harder to disrupt.

I am not saying we would have avoid war with a different president, just that invading Iraq was a somewhat random choice and a different president would have probably just focused on Afghanistan.

but the nation was eager to be deluded

I don't think that's fair. We American citizens were told directly that Iraq had WMDs and an attack on us was imminent.

If we were 'eager' for anything it was to stand together as a country. Most of us believed that the president had done due diligence (after all, he had access to intel that we didn't) and trusted him to do a competent job of analyzing the threat.

We were wrong in that trust.

This is false. Nobody claimed or believed an attack on the US was imminent (although another attack on Israel was a concern), the idea was that taking out Saddam could help stabilize the middle east. In official Washington it was well understood that WMDs were just an excuse/legal justification/foreign policy explanation for finishing the job begun in Iraq in 1992.

Nonsense. That is exactly what the administration implied. By implying the Saddam Hussein had connections to Al Qaeda and had WMDs, he clearly implied that we had to stop Iraq or else we would be in grave danger. That constituted the bulk of his argument for the war.

Maybe "official Washington" (whatever that is) knew differently, but the Bush administration was selling the public on the vision of a mushroom cloud in front of the white house.

> Yes the reasons for Iraq were pulled from the hat, but the nation was eager to be deluded. Not a conspiracy of two men in DC: can anyone really imagine the USA not invading anyone after the 9/11 attacks?

But we did: we invaded Afganistan very quickly. Honor was basically satisfied, and that was why the Bush team had to whip up all the stories about the secular Baathists partnering with the religious fanatics of AQ and also were working on WMDs to attack the USA etc.

Honor wasn't satisfied-- the top Taliban Mullah and Bin Laden both got away. And it wasn't just the Bush team whipping up support-- Congressional Democrats almost all voted to authorize force and the New York Times reporting supported WMDs as well. The consensus thinking was that Saddam was a bad guy who might have WMD, ongoing sanctions had their own human costs, and we were positioned to take him out easily.

> Honor wasn't satisfied-- the top Taliban Mullah and Bin Laden both got away.

But then it was a man-hunt, not a war. Honor was satisfied: a country's government which was seen as complicit and responsible was destroyed. Quibbling about Omar or Obama is like saying that the American public wasn't satisfied by the conquest of Japan in retribution for Pearl Harbor because the Emperor wasn't deposed and put on trial.

> And it wasn't just the Bush team whipping up support-- Congressional Democrats almost all voted to authorize force and the New York Times reporting supported WMDs as well.

Certainly. Once the drumbeats of war started.

Look at France's socialist Dominique Strauss-Kahn. If not for an allegation of sex abuse by a not-that-important cleaning lady, he would probably now be France's president.

Yes. Would the politics of France have changed in a significant way though?

There are multiple presidential candidates in most developed democracies, but chances of national politics taking really unpredictable turn remain low.

Here's how I see it: either Fujimoto was predisposed to a sushi career (his sushi destiny guaranteed, though with uncertain timing) or Fujimoto would have been equally amazed by any old thing his rich friend showed him. There's also the whole question of: out of all the sushi chefs in Japan, why Fujimoto?

But back to the dichotomy: I have no reason to believe Fujimoto was predestined for sushi. On the other hand, I would be shocked to know that the rich kid, though he couldn't have known at the time, held direct power over Fujimoto's future. What if the kid wanted to play soccer? Or play Pacman in an arcade? Or launch bottle rockets? Could Fujimoto have been equally good at those things?

It's a wonderful life, isn't it? Personally I find complex systems of cause and effect to be inherently fascinating. We basically don't understand how they work, at least not in a rigorous way. People are working on models, for example in systems biology, but it's early work.

Apparently Fujimoto really liked sushi. Combine that with the fact that living in Japan, you're going to be able to eat sushi at some point in your life, it was only a matter of time until he found out he really liked sushi and wanted to become a sushi-chef. For all we know, there had been several "close calls" before this one, his parents maybe wanting to celebrate a special occasion with sushi, but then changing their minds. If his friend hadn't treated them, he would've probably had other opportunities to taste sushi and find out the same thing.

> foofaraw

Ha! I never realized that was actually a word.

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